Editorial: U.S. should open door to more Syrian refugees after proper vetting

Published 6:42 pm, Thursday, September 17, 2015

Photo: Jacques Brinon — The Associated Press

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Migrants carrying belongings line up as they leave their tent camp in Paris, France, Thursday. Paris authorities are evacuating more than 500 Syrian and other migrants from tent camps and moving them to special housing as the country steps up efforts to deal with Europe’s migrant wave. less

Migrants carrying belongings line up as they leave their tent camp in Paris, France, Thursday. Paris authorities are evacuating more than 500 Syrian and other migrants from tent camps and moving them to special ... more

Photo: Jacques Brinon — The Associated Press

Editorial: U.S. should open door to more Syrian refugees after proper vetting

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The crisis in Syria has reached epic proportions. The desperation of refugees fleeing Syria is only magnified by the death toll left behind in the biggest refugee crisis to hit Europe since World War II.

About half of Syria’s people — more than 4 million — have been displaced by the civil war crisis and the road to freedom for many is treacherous and laden with death.

Families have drowned in the waves of the Mediterranean Sea or been found dead in the back of an abandoned truck, suffocated from lack of air.

And they are fleeing everywhere — Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq and to any nation that will accept them. Greece is reporting its shores are littered with lifejackets.

The unprecedented crisis is producing backlash and some of the channels refugees use are being cut off.

Hungary, a nation that has offered shelter to nearly 19,000 refugees, sealed its borders and its police force is using tear gas, water cannons and pepper spray on refugees seeking to cross over at Serbia. Germany has reintroduced border controls with Austria and Danish police have closed a motorway and rail links with Germany in an effort to prevent refugees heading north to Sweden.

President Barack Obama recently reversed course and said the U.S. would pave the way for 10,000 Syrians next year, but Connecticut’s junior senator says that is not enough.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, is calling for the United States to accept up to 50,000 Syrian refugees and some members of Congress want even more. Seventy-two House Democrats wrote a letter to Obama last week calling for the U.S. to take in 100,000 Syrians next fiscal year, along with 100,000 other refugees.

We agree with Murphy and support him and the other members of Congress pushing to bring more refugees into the U.S. As Murphy said, there is “something very dark about the United States” if it doesn’t.

Murphy acknowledges there is some risk involved. He said the U.S. must be vigilant not to let in anyone “who even sniffs of danger to the homeland,” but believes migrants can be properly vetted by the U.S. and paid for by shifting the $500 million it is spending on a failed effort to train a moderate Syrian force.

Refugees are subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States. Most are living in camps in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees registers them. Once the U.S. State Department receives their case files, it employs non-government contractors to pre-screen them for eligibility for refugee status, then they are subjected to health and security checks. Officers from the Department of Homeland Security fly from Washington to the camps and conduct interviews with candidates, seeking to weed out what a U.S. official called “liars, criminals and terrorists.”

But once in the U.S., statistics show immigrants do very well nationwide, including in Connecticut.

According to a study published earlier this year, Connecticut has a foreign-born population of 481,880, which represents 14 percent of the state’s 3.6 million residents.

A Survey of Business Owners found that in 2007, there were 23,409 immigrant-owned businesses, or 7 percent of all businesses, in the state. These businesses employed 47,000 full- and part-time workers, paying out $1.7 billion in salaries and earning almost $17 billion in annual receipts, according to the survey.

The U.S. — once the migrants have been properly vetted — should open its doors. It’s the right thing to do in this crisis. The backbone of America has always been in part about the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”